GoPro reported Q1 earnings on May 11 and missed by $0.32 per share. The stock fell 17.5% on the day. Then, on Wednesday, came a twist: the company retained Houlihan Lokey as a financial adviser to explore a potential sale and other strategic alternatives. That combination — a punishing earnings print followed by a formal sale process — is the defining tension of this week.
The price tells the story plainly. GPRO closed at $1.13 on Tuesday, down 14.4% on the day and 22.6% over the week. Yet on a one-month basis the stock is up 47% — a reflection of the brief pop that followed the strategic review announcement late Monday before the session closed. The company's market cap is roughly $155 million. With Houlihan Lokey now formally engaged, the bull case has narrowed to a single question: who buys this, and at what price.
Short interest heading into earnings was already elevated, and shorts covered aggressively over the past week. SI dropped 13.6% over the five-day period to reach 14.0% of free float — down from above 16% in late April. That de-risking accelerated on May 8, when short interest fell sharply in a single session. It looks like shorts trimmed ahead of the catalyst, locking in gains after a long rebuild through April. Despite the covering, the position is still material — 14% of float is far from washed out. Availability is comfortable at 117% of short interest, meaning there is no squeeze pressure in the lending market; new shorts can find stock to borrow easily. Cost to borrow has eased to under 0.9%, down roughly 19% over the week and less than a fifth of the brief spike to 4.5% in mid-April — another sign borrow is not constrained. The ORTEX short score holds at 65.9, in the upper third of the universe, confirming the stock remains meaningfully short relative to peers.
Options positioning is subdued but ticking higher in caution. The put/call ratio rose to 0.088 on Tuesday — just above its 20-day average of 0.079 and about one standard deviation above the mean. That's hardly alarming, but it is the highest reading in roughly three weeks and has been drifting upward since the late-April lows near 0.054. Relative to the 52-week high of 0.57, positioning is very light on puts — the market is not pricing in catastrophe, but the PCR drift suggests some modest increase in hedging demand post-earnings.
The Street picture is stale and should be read with caution. The most recent analyst data is from November 2025, with the last price target change — Wedbush cutting to $1.50 from $2.00 — filed in August 2024. The mean target of $1.30 is not far from the current price of $1.13, but those figures reflect coverage from over a year ago and may not incorporate the company's current trajectory. Given the formal sale process now underway, prior targets have limited practical value.
The institutional holder list offers some context. Founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman holds 16.5% of shares outstanding — a significant alignment of interests, and a position that would materially influence any sale negotiation. Acadian, Point72, and Millennium all added positions in late 2025 per the most recent filings, suggesting some quantitative and multi-strategy funds were building exposure before the strategic review became public. The insider record from February shows Woodman and CFO Brian McGee each sold small lots at around $0.80 — largely routine vesting-related activity at valuations well below today's price.
The next formal event is a second earnings call scheduled for June 2. With a strategic review now formally underway, that event is less about quarterly metrics and more about any update on the sale process — whether management signals deal talks are progressing, whether a bidder has emerged, or whether the process quietly stalls.
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